Do Not Cease Your Dance, Sweet Girls!

The final line-up of Pan's People (1975-76) 

(L-R: Ruth Pearson, Sue Menhenick, Cherry Gillespie, Lee Ward, and Mary Corpe) [1]

 

What we value when we watch a dance is not necessarily the choreography 

or the experience of beauty, but that which makes us feel happy to be alive ... 

 

 

I. 

 

I can't dance. But, like Zarathustra, I am no enemy to the cavorting of nubile creatures with fair ankles: 

 

"Do not cease your dance, sweet girls! No spoil-sport has come to you with an evil eye!" [2]

 

For whether one is watching a group of girls dance in the woods, like Zarathustra and his disciples, or Pan's People on an old episode of Top of the Pops, research suggests that doing so elicits a positive affective response (i.e., it makes you feel good; like a ray of sunshine on a grey day).  

 

 

II. 

 

Most people are aware that physical activities of any description have a beneficial effect on the person who is performing them, but what is less well known is that simply observing others engaged in such can lift one's mood and revitalise. 

 

And so it is that watching girls dance - if only on TV - can be both rousing and arousing and can trigger happy memories, even when the dance moves are not all that sophisticated or aesthetically of the highest calibre [3]. 

 

Watching dance, it turns out, is as effective at inducing measurable changes at various psychophysiological levels as listening to music. For watching girls wiggle around, kick their legs, and shake their bits increases neural activity in limbic structures of the brain and triggers the release of pleasure-related neurotransmitters (such as dopamine). 

 

And so, to quote Zarathustra once more: Do not cease your dance, sweet girls!  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Pan's People was an all-female British dance troupe, formed and choreographed by Flick Colby, famous for their weekly appearances on Top of the Pops (BBC Television) from 1968 to 1976, dancing to hit records when the artists were unavailable (or unwilling) to perform in the studio. Despite a changing line-up, Pan's People quickly became a crucial element of the show (particularly appreciated by the dads watching at home). 

      As Julia Raeside writes: "Their often literal interpretations of song lyrics and their jaunty girlishness is what most will associate with them", although that's not to deny that, in their innocence and cutesy outfits, they could be provocatively sexy, too. See her article 'Why we fell in love with Pan's People', in The Guardian (30 May 2011): click here. 

 

[2] Nietzsche, 'The Dance Song', Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books 1969), p. 131. 

      I am aware of the fact there are male dancers and that they also might delight those watching. However, here I'm adopting the perspective of a man who prefers, like Zarathustra and like Bill Cotton, to watch all female dance troupes such as Pan's People and Legs & Co., rather than mixed-sex troupes such as Ruby Flipper. Thus, the aim of this particular post is to contribute to an understanding of the mechanisms which underlie the emotional and aesthetic experience of a straight cismale when watching young women rhythmically move their bodies to music.     

 

[3] It might be noted that research has shown that whilst felt experiences of emotional pleasure seem to correlate with the physical aspects of the actual dance - it's choreography, if you like - sexual arousal is often triggered by something else (i.e., independently of the dance itself). 

      See Julia F. Christensen, Frank E. Pollick, Anna Lambrechts, and Antoni Gomila; 'Affective responses to dance', in Acta Psychologica, Vol. 168 (July 2016), pp. 91-105. For a review of this study by Christian Jarrett in The Psychologist (the journal of the British Psychological Society), click here.    

 

 

Bonus: Pan's People dancing to 'The Hustle' by Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony in 1975: click here. 

      This may not be their best routine or performance, but it's a favourite of mine and millions of other viewers on YouTube nostalgic for a lost era. The track, by the way, got to number 3 in the UK singles chart and was released from the album Disco Baby (Avco Records, 1975). 

 

For a sister post to this one, with Legs & Co. dancing to Mike Oldfield's 'Blue Peter' (published 1 June 2025), click here.  

 

 

More Utopian Than Ethiopian: Thoughts on Michael Anthony's Interview with Johnny Rotten (May 2025)

Screenshot from The Michael Anthony Show with Johnny Rotten 

Episode 189 (27 May 2025): click here 

 

 

I. 

 

Hats off to Irish podcaster Michael Anthony for being able to tolerate being in the presence of the grotesque and abject figure of so-called punk legend Johnny Rotten for over an hour. 

 

For whilst some may still find the former Sex Pistol irreverently entertaining, his witless attempts at humour, cultural analysis and political commentary - combined with rambling reminiscences about his past - surely make him one of the most boorish and boring individuals on the planet.      

 

 

II. 

 

Anthony seems to have graduated from the give 'em enough rope school of interviewers; he knows that if you offer an ignorant and opinionated big mouth like Rotten the opportunity to relax and speak at length they will invariably say something revealing and potentially compromising (particularly if plied with beer and cigarettes throughout the conversation). 

 

Thus, for example, as well as reaffirming his admiration for Donald Trump as an agent of chaos and his contempt for the Palestinians, Lydon concedes that he is primarily driven by anger and the sense that whilst he doesn't have all the answers, he is in the right on most things.  

 

Lydon is also, it turns out, skilled in the dark art of victim blaming (i.e., shifting responsibility for abusive behaviour from the perpetrator to the one who is harmed in some manner). 

 

Thus, he suggests that misogyny only exists because a sufficient number of women are complicit (go to 38:29 in the above interview) and that children of his generation who fell prey to sexual abuse by paedophile priests were either too stupid for their own good, or willing participants (1:04:16). Smart kids, says Lydon, like him and his frends, knew what was what and kept out of trouble.    

 

Whether Anthony should have challenged Lydon on these views more than he did is debatable. As mentioned earlier, his style of interviewing tends toward neutrality (i.e., its non-confrontational and non-judgemental). But this open and empathetic technique often produces the most telling results; interviewees are made to feel so comfortable that they sometimes say things they might otherwise keep to themselves.      

 

 

III.

 

Finally, just as Nietzsche was bitterly disappointed by his one-time idol Richard Wagner when the latter threw himself at the foot of the Cross and embraced Christian themes in his late work, so too am I shocked (though not particularly surprised) to hear Johnny 'I am an antichrist' Rotten declare that, for him, when all is said and done, the person he thinks is the greatest star of all (if only for the longevity of his fame) is ... Jesus Christ!    

 

 

Notes

 

For a pair of posts published in July of 2024 in which I discuss Rotten as an abject antihero, click here and/or here. 

 

For a much earlier post, from January 2013, that anticipates how my love for Rotten would increasingly turn to hate, please click here.  

 

And for those, like me, who now need a reminder of just how charismatic Rotten was back in the day, here's a clip from an interview with Janet Street-Porter for The London Weekend Show (LWT, 28 Nov. 1976): click here.

 

 

On Plato and Starmer: Noble Liars

Noble Liars: Plato and Keir Starmer

 

 

I. 

 

Q: What unites Plato (an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period) and Keir Starmer (a British politician and lawyer currently serving as Prime Minister of the UK)? 

A: Both believe in the political necessity of falsehoods; of deliberately propagating a noble lie in order to achieve and secure social cohesion and stability. Both understand that this might be seen as morally questionable, but justify their mendacity by appealing to the greater good - and, indeed, their own inherent virtue. 

 

Plato wished to found his ideal city-state - ruled over by golden philosopher-kings - on a myth about the metallic origins of class difference [1]; whilst Starmer, on the other hand, wants to defend his ideal of a multicultural society - ruled over by a woke liberal elite - on a myth that has the red letters DEI running through it like those in a stick of rock. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, as someone who has previously written in praise of three great liars - Nietzsche, Twain, and Wilde [2] - and argued that lying is an art not only vital to the functioning of society, but necessary for the preservation of human life in a violently chaotic and inhuman world, it would be hypocritical for me to now condemn Plato and Starmer for their mixture of political pragmatism and cynicism, and to start defending the ideal of Truth at all times and on every occasion (as Kant does, for example). 

 

Nevertheless, I am concerned that when a noble lie is exposed, it can have unfortunate consequences; triggering the very things that those who posit such fear and seek to prevent (e.g., a loss of trust in authority figures and institutions, as well as a breakdown of social order). 

 

And the thing with Starmer is he's such a transparently dishonest figure that everyone knows he's lying all of the time. Starmer risks destabilising the UK and pushing the electorate into either political apathy (they no longer vote), political extremism (they start to vote for maverick figures), or violent protest (they start to throw bricks); for if nothing is true, everything is permitted [3].

 

Notes

 

[1] Plato presented the noble lie - γενναῖον ψεῦδος - in the fictional tale known as the Myth of the Metals in Book III (414d - 415e) of The Republic (c. 375 BC). 

      In it, Socrates describes the natural origin of the three social classes - all born of the same good earth - who compose the Kallipolis. First are the men of gold, who make the best rulers; second, are the men with more silver in their souls, who make the best auxiliaries and are thus destined to assist the men of gold; and thirdly, are the hoi polloi or men of bronze, who have a different set of strengths (and weaknesses) and make the best farmers and craftsmen. 

      Interestingly, although once born into a certain class one cannot leave it, parents with one type of soul can nevertheless produce offspring with a different metallic nature, so there is a degree of social mobility even in Plato's ideal state. Socrates claims that if everyone believed this myth it would have the positive effect of making them care for society and each other.        

 

[2] For the post on Nietzsche in the series on three great liars, published in June 2020, click here. For the post on Mark Twain in the same series, click here. And for the third and final post in the series, on Oscar Wilde, click here. 

      Readers are also invited to click here for a follow up post entitled 'Tell Me Sweet Little Lies' (23 June 2020). 

[3] This so-called assassin's creed is a nihilistic statement par excellence (even if it doesn't simply mean that any action is justifiable or without consequences). For many people, the phrase is taken from a video game first released in 2007; for others, it comes from the 1938 novel by Vladimir Bartol. But I'm sure readers of TTA will recall that Nietzsche also used this phrase in the Genealogy (1887); see Essay III, section 24.   

Thoughts Inspired by Three Short Stories by Chōkōdō Shujin

(The Tripover, 2025) 

Note: all page numbers in this post refer to this edition.

 

 

I. 

 

Our friends at The Tripover have a new book out; a debut short story collection by Chōkōdō Shujin that opens in a cabbage field and ends on the volcanic island of Iowa Jima, but mostly unfolds in that non-space of the excluded middle; the space that is in between here and there, now and then, fantasy and reality; the realm of fuzzy logic, dark limpidity, and what Nietzsche terms dangerous knowledge where imagination and memory meet. 

 

A good place for any writer to explore - even at the risk of losing their way ...

 

 

II. 

 

The name Chōkōdō Shujin will, of course, ring a bonshō bell for those readers familiar with Japanese literature. For it was originally the pen name adopted by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa; a writer viewed by many as a master of the structured short story who, tragically, topped himself in 1927, aged 35, after both his mental and physical health began to markedly deteriorate, leaving behind him over 150 short stories, as well as a wife and three children. 

 

Now, the author of this collection of tales writes under this name; honouring his dead hero whilst, at the same time, attempting to find his own voice and literary style. I have to say, that's either a brave and confident or foolish and conceited thing to do; a bit like a young philosopher deciding to publish a book under the name Zarathustra and thereby inviting comparison with Nietzsche.

 

Still, who knows, maybe it pays to call attention to oneself in this manner, though whether he’ll be nominated for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize [a] on the basis of this book remains to be seen ...

 

 

III.

 

Of the ten stories assembled here, there are three that most captured my interest and so, rather than write a review of the book as a whole, I'd like to make some brief remarks inspired by this trio of tales and the themes of agalmatophilia, sexsomnia, and suicide that reside at their dark heart [b].

 

Meguri 

 

As someone who has written often on the topic of agalmatophilia, I was naturally drawn to the longest story in Shujin's book entitled 'Meguri' - a term which, like many Japanese words, has multiple meanings depending on the kanji characters used. 

 

In the context of this tale, for example, it may refer to the circulation of souls contained within the statue; or it could refer to the manner in which the statue patrols the house at night, looking for love or seeking revenge.  

 

The proganonist, Sōtarō Takeshita, is haunted by the sculpted figure of a Chinese noblewoman with slender, finely carved wrists to which - as a cheirophile as well as a statue fetishist - he is particularly partial. 

 

Her beauty is a pale and perfect combination of coldness and cruelty and ever since falling and cutting his head on the statue as a young boy, Sōtarō has had a strange bond with her; one sealed with blood. At night, she often stands by his bedside, silent and motionless, disturbing his sleep, before returning to her place in the parlour at dawn. 

 

The author doesn't say that the young man masturbates as she stands looking down on him, but he does mention the motion of his trembling hands and I guess we can take this as rather coy way of suggesting such (the strange bond between them is thus sealed with semen as well as blood). 

 

As the servant Tatsuo says: "The master of this house has always been like a lover to her …" [36]

 

Unfortunately, the statue also has a propensity to kill - particularly intruders who break into the house. Following one such incident, the police are called and Detective Nishitani of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police almost immediately suspects strange goings on involving the statue. For whilst her face was very beautiful, there was the look of "malice in her piercing eyes" [26]. 

 

He interviews the young master of the house: 

 

"Nishitani's impression of Sōtarō was one of profound loneliness. Indeed, the young man seemed dead inside, as hollow as the statue, as if his soul had been stolen from his body." [30]

 

And, by the end of the story, that's precisely what has happened; Sōtarō's soul is stolen and imprisoned within the stone along with the lonely and tormented souls of many other poor wretches. 

 

That's probably not great; a bit like being in the sunken place that Chris finds himself in Jordan Peele's excellent psychological horror Get Out (2017). One is conscious, but robbed of agency and denied freedom of movement and the ability to communicate verbally with others.

 

Ultimately, the question of whether Sōtarō is dead, dreaming, mad, or perhaps suffering from locked-in syndrome (pseudocoma) isn't really answered, so I guess it doesn't really matter. Besides, human beings are remarkably resilient and can get used to almost any conditions: 

 

"Whether this was madness or death, it did not seem to be such a fearsome thing. It was far less unpleasant than his waking existence." [46]  

 

 

Nakajima Says

 

If ‘Meguri’ is a warning against the dangers of excessive masturbation - it leads to a loss of soul - then we might read 'Nakajima Says' as a warning not to daydream or meditate to the point at which one falls into a state of sexually violent somnambulism and one's thoughts begin to first fragment and then dissolve until "there is nothing left in mind, and only emptiness remains" [54]. 

 

This may be a desired goal for those who tie spiritual enlightenment to the overcoming of consciousness and moral agency, but I can’t personally see the attraction of sleepwalking along imaginary corridors or living in "an intense world of disconnection" [55]. No man is an island - even if his name is Nakajima.

 

Nor am I a fan of reaching a psycho-physiological state of numbness (hypoesthesia); building a BwO is an attempt to deliver man from his automatic reactions, it is not about becoming "free and empty" [59] of all feeling, gaiety, and dance so that one ends us belonging to that "dreary parade of sucked dry, catatonicized, vitrified, sewn-up bodies" described by Deleuze and Guattari [c]. 

 

However, I’m all for a little urban gardening; creating space for wild flowers and building a little pond for crabs and catfish to live. And if this is what Nakajima suggests we do, then that's great, although I’m extremely wary of the idea that this involves controlling the natural landscape and "requires an immersive contemplation of the ego" [58]. 

 

It turns out that Nakajima has a girlfriend - Sonoko - whose lovely name means child of the garden. She possesses, we are told, "the poise and mystery of a café waitress" [61] and no doubt her smile is ineffably sweet, her figure divinely slim [d]. 

 

But her beauty doesn't justify grabbing her hair and pulling her to the ground ... And Nakajima's sexual aggression, fuelled as much by Sonoko's silence as her appearance - "Why doesnt she scream or cry?" [61] - is as reprehensible as his desire to subdue nature and empty himself of all thought and feeling like a sleepwalking zombie.

 

Of course, it might be that Nakajima - if ever charged with rape or sexual assault - would offer a criminal defence based on a medical diagnosis of sexsomnia; a condition which can occur at the same time as other parasomnia activities and lead to an abnormally high level of sexual tension dangerously coupled with decreased inhibitions [e].  

Does living in a dream not only become a reality, but enable one to escape culpability ...?  

 

 

The Scent of Roses 

On the suicide of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, 1927 

 

"No one could be surprised by Akutagawa's death [...] For two years, he had meticulously planned his voluntary death." [83] 

 

Indeed, the letter he left behind was so carefully crafted and revised, that it was more like a beautiful prose poem than a hastily scribbled suicide note stained with tears and full of errors. 

 

Akutagawa understood what it was to practice joy before death; i.e., to constantly imagine how best to construct a beautiful, stylish - some might even say chic - exit from this life and keep at hand the instruments that might facilitate such. 

 

In Akutagawa's case, this meant a small bottle of poison:

 

"Always the aesthete, he had no desire to throw himself in front of a train or from a roof. His vanity, too, was the reason for having decided against hanging, although he had attempted to do so on more than one occasion. Akutagawa was a strong swimmer, which precluded drowning; as his hands shook from the sleeping pills that he took even in the daytime, seppuku was not an option, despite his prowess as a martial artist." [87]

 

His wife, Fumi, appears to have understood her husband's desire for a voluntary death; her first words on discovering his body were to congratulate him:  "'I'm so happy for you, darling'" [84].

 

For to die at thirty-five ensured he would "always be remembered at the height of his beauty and talent" [85]. But it's not so easy dying at the right time; Zarathustra speaks of it as a difficult and rare art [f]. So well done Akutagawa, whose death was widely reported throughout the world and served as an inspiration to those who know their Nietzsche. 

 

What wasn't reported, however - and here comes the fictional twist in the tale - was that Akutagawa's close friend, the artist Ryūichi Ōana, could not bear the thought of never seeing his face again. And so, whilst standing alone by the casket, he found himself tempted to do something that even he considered monstrous; namely, remove the nails and open the rectangular pine box ....

 

"Ōana knew very well that the dead man in the casket would be quite unrecognisable after four days, when dry ice was in such short supply. There was no doubt in his mind that, if he were to see such a face, he would remember it with horror until the end of days. And yet he could not overcome the desire - no, the need - to see Akutagawa one last time." [89]

 

Shujin continues:

 

"With a strength beyond himself, he pried the lid from the casket, holding his handkerchief to his nose. Ōana was, indeed, startled. The face before him remained unchanged from the day he had painted the death mask, pale and at peace, his lips slightly parted, as though he had at last seen eternity and found himself in a state of grace." [89]

 

That's a nice way to close a story. 

 

And it reminds one of the famous case of Ellen West, who, like Akutagawa, also died after taking a lethal dose of poison, having spent her last hours reading, writing, and snacking. Her psychiatrist, Ludwig Binswanger, a pioneer in the field of existential psychology and much influenced by Heidegger, said after viewing the body of his patient:  'She looked as she had never looked in life - calm, happy, and peaceful.' 

Although whether a scent of roses pervaded her room, I cannot say ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The Akutagawa Prize is a Japanese literary award presented biannually to a promising young writer. It was established in 1935 by Kan Kikuchi, then-editor of Bungeishunjū magazine, in memory of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and is sponsored by the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature.

 

[b] Let me say at the outset that this is not strictly speaking a faithful reading or critical assessment of the tales, so much as a perverse reimagining in line with my own interests rather than the intentions of the author Chōkōdō Shujin. Apologies to him -and his publishers - should they feel I've taken excessive liberties with the text and in any way detracted from the original stories.

 

[c] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans, Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1996), p. 150. 

[d] Regular readers of Torpedo the Ark will recall the recent post on the sexual politics of waitressing (12 March, 2025), in which I referenced a poem by Robert W. Service that includes the lines "Her smile ineffably is sweet / Divinely she is slim" - click here.   

 

[e] The number of alleged sex offenders claiming sexsomnia as a legal defence is rapidly growing; the argument is that a person who commits an act whilst asleep (i.e., not fully conscious - even if their eyes are are wide open) cannot be held criminally responsible for that act; that there has to be intent on their part and the act has to be voluntary, for a crime to have been committed. 

 

[f] See Nietzsche, 'Of Voluntary Death', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883). For Nietzsche, as the great comedian of the ascetic ideal, it is of course all about timing: 'Many die too late and some die too early. Still the doctrine sounds strange: Die at the right time.' 

 

 

Click here for a sister post to this one based on another tale found in Nakajima Says and Other Stories (2025). 

Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art with David Salle (Part 3)

David Salle working in his studio 

photographed by Frenel Morris (2023)

 

"Modern art has always hungered for philosophical, theoretical, and verbal expression. 

 However, the theoretical and the philosophical can be counterproductive 

if they constrain rather than liberate the imagination." - David Salle 

  

 

I.

 

If Malcolm Mclaren learnt one lesson from art school it was that it's better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success:

 

"'I realised that by understanding failure you were going to be able to improve your condition as an artist. Because you were not going to fear failure you were going to embrace it and, in doing so, maybe break the rules and by doing that, change the culture and, possibly by doing that, change life itself.'" [a]

 

And I think we can call Jack Goldstein a flamboyant failure; a cool good-looking cat, whom Salle never saw "without a leather jacket and a cigarette" [b]; the kind of artist "who thinks he has to be the prickliest cactus in the desert" [153].

 

In 2003, he committed suicide (aged 57): 

 

"The cliché would have it that gave all he had to his work, when it might be more accurate to say that apart from the work, there wasn't much in this life that he could claim as his own. [...] He was a man who had somehow failed to be 'made' by his experiences - he was only 'un-made' by them [...]" [155-156]

 

Of course, the posthumous part of his story is also familiar; "since his death, Jack has been lionized by a new generation of young artists who see in his rigid and strained sensibility a yearning for something clean and pure [...]" [156] [c].

 

In other words, he's what Nietzsche would call a posthumous individual ...

 

 

II.

 

Salle is clearly a fan of the young Frank Stella; an artist best known perhaps for his Black Paintings (1958-60), a series of twenty-four related works in a minimalist style that free painting from drawing:

 

"Stella instinctively understood something fundamental about painting: that it is made by covering a flat surface with paint [...] If a painting could be executed with a kind of internal integrity, the image - i.e., the meaning - would take care of itself." [165]

 

Some critics - and even some other artists - feared at the time that Stella's work marked the end of art. But, actually, it marked a fresh beginning; "after first stripping down painting to its essentials, the creator then populated the world with every manner of flora and fauna" [166].   

 

And, ironically, by the end of his career Stella has become, says Salle, merely a decorative painter; one who is actually closer to painters in the art nouveau tradition, than to Malevich; one whose late works "still occasionally command our attention, even awe, but more often than not leave us with a feeling of a lot of energy being expended to no particular end, of being more trouble than they're worth" [170] - ouch!

 

 

III.    

 

"Style reflects character" [172], says Salle. 

 

And if there's a single sentence which brings home just how he and I philosophically differ, this is it. For one thing, it presupposes an underlying character - some kind of essential moral quality that is straightforwardly reflected in our manner, our behaviour, and our appearance. 

 

I would say, on the contrary, that style - as a form of discipline and cruelty - shapes character and would refer to Nietzsche on this matter:

 

"To 'give style' to one's character - a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye." [d]

 

Style, in other words, is an art of existence involving not only a single taste, but what Foucault terms techniques of the self. That is to say, a set of voluntary actions by which individuals: 

 

"not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria" [e].  

 

 

IV.

 

Where Salle and I do agree, however, is on the question of appropriation - like him, I'm happy with such a practice; what is Torpedo the Ark if not a blog assembled largely of notes? 

 

Ultimately, like James Joyce - according to David Markson - I'm "'quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man'" [177]. If nothing else, as Salle says, at least this succeeds in irritating a lot of people and, besides, the act of choosing what one steals and appropriates can be "in and of itself, in the right hands" [177] an art. 

 

The greatest of appropriationists are alchemists: they transform materials. For they understand that by changing the context you create fresh meaning: "Even if you repaint, or reprint, something as close as possible to its model, you will end up making something new." [178]

 

When a critic says: 'They're someone else's ideas!' Simply reply: 'Yes, but they're mine too.'

 

 

V.     

 

This is something I also agree with and which strikes me as important:

 

"We're taught to think of modernism [...] as a story of progress and up-to-dateness, a developmental stream that seems logical, even inevitable. But some of the most interesting painting exists in the margins, apart from the official story. [...] It's a question of temperament and talent, and also of context, rather than linear progress." [189]

 

Sometimes, one needs to travel back into art history, into antiqity, into mythology, in order to project "an updated version of the past into the present" [189] and learn how to live yesterday tomorrow (as Malcolm would say). And whether we call this retrofuturism or neoclassicism it pretty much means the same thing. 

An artist, says, Salle, is ultimately "both himself and a distillation of everything relevant that preceded him" [191] [f].

 

VI.

 

Is contemporary art infantalised? 

 

Salle seems to say as much (although he doesn't use this word):
 

"In the world of contemporary art, the quantity of work that depicts, appeals to, references, critiques, or mimics childood has reached critical mass. For the first time, the international style is not a matter of form or invention but one of content. And that content is all wrapped up with regression. The art public becomes excited by the same things that babies like: bright, shiny things; simple, rounded forms; cartoons; and, always, animals. Brightly colored or shiny and highly reflective; or soft, squishy, furry, pliable - huggable." [200]

 

What's going on? 

 

Maybe, suggests Salle, it's compensatory for all the grown-up things that also define the age: "class war; government dysfunction; religious fundamentalism; the baking of the planet - take your pick, the list goes on" [199].

 

Maybe. 

 

Though I very much doubt that's how D. H. Lawrence would view things. I suspect, rather, that he'd rage against the infantalisation of art and see it as a profoundly perverse form of corruption or decadence. 

 

He'd also point to the curious fact that the perverted child artist is also an often gifted businessman, making a lot of money by turning the gallery space into a nursery and offering works that provide instant gratification and the promise of ice cream [g].  

 

 

VII.

 

Is it true, as Salle suggests, that "the qualities we admire in people [...] are often the same ones we feel in art that holds our attention" [211]?  

 

I mean, it's possible. But surely the most fascinating works of art possess (inhuman/daemonic) qualities that pass beyond admirable ...?      

 

 

VIII. 

 

Salle makes a distinction between pictorial art and presentational art; the first is all about self-expression; the latter is concerned with a set of cultural signifiers. 

 

Of course, nothing in art is simply one thing or the other. It may be convenient to provisionally posit such a binary dictinction, but there is no either/or. But, having done so, it's probably right to say that presentational art has triumphed over the last fifty years; a fact that makes Salle's heart sink. 

 

Why? 

 

Because, says Salle, we end up with art that is simply commentary and lacks emotional power. One might even say such art lacks presence or what used to be called aura:

 

"Baldly put, a work of art was said to emanate this aura as a result of the transference of energy from the artist to the work, an aesthetic variant of the law of thermodynamics." [230]

 

The problem is, that's not just baldly put, it's badly put. In fact, it's a misunderstanding of the term aura - certainly as used by Walter Benjamin, who, in a famous essay written in 1936 defined it as an artwork's unique presence in time and space [h]. 

 

In other words, aura results from cultural context and is not something invested in the work by the artist. Not for the first time, Salle is giving the latter too much credit; viewing the artist as a larger than life personality and the souce of mysterious energy; as one who is often unhampered by sanity but gifted with genius. 

 

I'm not by any means opposed to artworks that exist as actual objects crafted by hand and full of auratic authenticity. But, unable to produce such myself - and without the means to buy such - I'm perfectly content to think of art primarily as something presented on a screen or printed on the page of a book or magazine.

 

And even Salle admits that, at least since Picasso, "how well a work reproduces plays a significant role in its popularity; the most acclaimed artists from the '60s, for instance, look fabulous in reproduction" [234]. 

 

He continues:

 

"This isn't to suggest that those works didn't also have tremendous physical presence, but the fact remains most people  are primarily familiar with a work of art through a reproduction; those who have the good fortune of experiencing the painting firsthand are fewer in number, and those who have the luxury of actually living with it are very rare indeed." [234]

 

But still there are some works that look more compelling in a magazine or on a screen than sitting in a gallery space; this is what Salle terms art conceived as spectacle or as advertising; art that is ironically detached from its own form and exists happily as a pure image; art that is devoid of aura - but then, as Salle says: "It's a relief sometimes to let go of things that no longer serve." [239] [i]  

 

 

Anish Kapoor: Cloud Gate (2004-06) 

Polished stainless steel (10 x 20 x 12.8 m)

Millennium Park, Chicago, USA.

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 49. 

      In an address given to the New York Academy of Art in 2011, Salle says: "I think it's fair to say that failure is the last taboo in American culture. [...] It might just be my sensibility, but I've always been attracted to the idea of the noble failure; the attempt at something that was probably bound to fail at some point, but the contemplation of which is exciting nonetheless. But this archetype of the noble failure doesn't seem to have much currency anymore; in fact, it probably went out of fashion  about the same time that the alienated hero was given a pink slip." [249]

      McLaren wanted to destroy success; today, artists want to be popular and succeed in the market place. Salle seems okay with this; "sometimes the most poular art is also the best" [250] and if you're a genuine artist, money and fame won't greatly change what you do (nor the amount of time spent alone in the studio).         

[b] David Salle, How to See (W. W. Norton, 2016), p. 154. All further page references to this work will be given directly in the post. 

 

[c] Later, writing of Mike Kelly - another artist who topped himself (in 2012, and also aged 57, like Goldstein) - Salle says that suicide can't be trumped in its finality and thus "makes the survivors seem small" [159].

 

[d] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 290, p. 232.

[e] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1992), pp. 10-11. 

[f] Later, in a piece on Francis Picabia, Salle writes that every generation wants to revisit and revise the past in some manner and that "letting the air out out of the story of linear progress" [197] was something that characterised the work of him and his contemporaries.

[g] According to Salle; the giant bean sculpture by Anish Kapoor - pictured above at the end of the this post - is a work that says, "'There will be ice cream'" [244]; one that is very large, very shiny, and, even though its hard and metallic to the touch, one that makes you "want to cuddle it" [199], or take a selfie standing in front, smiling.   

 

[h] Benjamin's essay, 'The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction', can be found in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn (The Bodley Head, 2015), pp. 211-244. 

      See section II which opens with the lines: "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be."  

 

[i] Salle goes on to add: "I have always found it a relief to let go of stuff that I only partly believe in. It makes me feel lighter, better." [239] I interpret this as saying the abandonment of ideals that weigh us down is a crucial aspect of overcoming the spirit of gravity.

 

To read part one of this post, click here.

 

To read part two of this post, click here. 

 

To read notes on David Salle's Introduction to How to See 92016), click here.  

Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art with David Salle (Part 1)

Photo of David Salle by Robert Wright (2016)

 

 

I. 

 

I'm guessing many UK readers of a certain age will remember the 1982 Fun Boy Three hit (ft. Bananarama) 'It Aint What You Do (It's the Way That You Do It)' [a] - and this essentially sums up one of David Salle's main arguments about painting: never mind the content, concern yourself with the question of style:

 

"Subject matter - the what - can of course be a big deal. It's also easy to talk about. But more to the heart of the work, the thing that reveals its nature and quality, is the how, the specific inflection and touch that go into its making." [b]  

 

I obviously wouldn't use the same language as Mr Salle, but, basically, I agree that if you wish "to take a work's psychic temperature, look at its surface energy" [15]. For as Nietzsche says, the trick is to stop courageously at the skin and learn how to adore appearance; to become like those ancient Greeks who delighted in forms and colours and who were superficial out of profundity [c].

 

Art is the stylish representation of form; non-sentimental, ferociously intelligent; and full of a certain immediacy that "leaves one with a feeling of reality refreshed" [21].  

II. 

What makes a picture? 

For D. H. Lawence, it has something to do with purity of spirit and allowing the picture to come "clean out of instinct, intuition, and sheer physical action" [d]. 

 

I'm not sure, but I suspect Salle would agree with this, though he also mentions the importance of pictorial staging and "how forcefully a painting evokes the strangeness of the visual world" [23] [e]. 

Salle further says that it helps if the artist can draw with real confidence; with the arm, not just the wrist. Though that's not something that Lawrence worried about too much and he sneers at those early critics of Cézanne who believed being able to draw a cat accurately enough so it looks like a cat is the most crucial aspect of making pictures [f].    

 

 

III.

I like Salle's contention that: "A spirit of childish refusal runs through the center of the avant-garde impulse [...] No I won't use color; I won't make beautiful things; I won't entertain." [30]

 

Such negativity, when freed from resentment, becomes a kind of active and affirmative nihilism, and will always have a good deal of appeal not to those who subscribe to a utopian vision, as Salle suggests, but - on the contrary - to those who reject such idealism and realise that we are not locked into an established narrative, possessing as we do not only the power to say No, but the option of neutral indifference (thereby baffling the paradigm) [g].  

 

 

IV.

 

"For where there is imagery, a story - implicit or explicit - is not far behind." [44]

 

That sounds like an idea worth discussing - and doubtless it is one that has, in fact, already been discussed at great length. For Salle, it simply means that art can be representational without having to apologise and not only point to things in the world but include personal elements too.

 

The romantic in me would tend to agree; but the classical aspect of my nature makes me slightly wary of where this leads us; a touch of human warmth is one thing, but I do not want art that it is Allzumenschliches ...

 

 

V.

 

Salle contrasts talent and imagination: "Imagination fuels talent and funnels into it, but on its own lacks body" [57]. Talent is the ability to actually do something; it's not merely the possession of knowledge.

 

I suppose it's good if an artist has both - as well as the ability to combine them - although, if I had to choose, then I'd sooner have imagination than talent which, today, thanks to Simon Cowell, is today "easily confused with [...] a desire for attention" [57].

 

For Salle, Dana Schutz is an artist who has both - as well as a slightly perverse sense of humour. I'm not going to argue with that, but would just point out that she's not the first artist to paint people sneezing, yawning, or vomiting. 

 

For example, back in 1928 D. H. Lawrence produced an interesting watercolour entitled Yawning (although, admittedly, the central male and female figures appear to be stretching rather than yawning); the same year that he also produced Dandelions which showed a man pissing [h]. 

 

Both works illustrate how the body is always looking to exert itself and escape the overcoding of the organism and how simple acts, such as yawning, might be conceived as expressive of the intensive forces of bodily sensation. 

 

Whether there is as much fancy (to use Salle's word) in Lawrence's work as Schutz's, I suspect not.

 

 

VI.

 

Just as there still some idiots insisting punk's not dead, so there are those who pretend that pop art is just as vital now as it was back in the Swinging Sixties (a time that most weren't even there to witness). 

 

Salle is not afraid to disillusion such people; "those days aren't here anymore [...] and all the record auction prices paid in the world aren't going to bring them back" [71].  

 

Pop, like punk, is over and it's images must be erased because no longer true for us today. The liberation that it promised has come to be seen for what it is; "an emptying-out process of jumped-up consumer stimulation that left you with very little in the way of tangible values" [68].   

 

Worse: 

 

"By the '70s pop art started to look like an embrace of this new consumer-driven social order; it felt a touch corrupt and compromised, and integrated a little too easily into the middle-high strata of public taste." [68]

 

(This seems to be a pop - no pun intended - at Warhol, rather than at Salle's much admired pal Roy Lichtenstein.) 

 

 

VII.

 

I have to confess: most of the contemporary artists that Salle refers to are not names with which I'm familiar: Alex Katz, Amy Sillman, Christopher Wool, Robert Gober, et al. Indeed, one of the pleasures of reading this book is learning about previously unknown figures and discovering their works. 

 

Of course, there are a few names I do recognise: Jeff Koons, for example; an artist I've discussed (and often defended) in several posts on Torpedo the Ark over the years [i]. And so I was particularly interested to see what he says about the man who has "done more than anyone else to make middle-class American happiness a legitimate subject, as well as the guiding aesthetic principle of his art" [75].  

 

Salle has known Koons since 1979 and clearly admired him from the off:

 

"You could sense the hidden depths: his deep love for and identifcation with art, high art, which is, I think, the source of much that is good in his work. It's the reason he is better than those who would try to be like him. Art is everything to Koons; he has internalised its essence [...] and his art is a combination of all the great things he has ever seen." [75]

 

Putting aside the fact that art has no essence, that's a rather lovely thing to say (I wish my friends were as generous in their praise). 

 

For Salle, major artists are often "a combination of unlikely pairings" [76] and Koons's art "represents the conflation of the readymade with the dream of surrealism" [76]; which is a clever way of saying that Koons has more in common with Duchamp and Dalí than he does with Warhol (despite what most critics think) [j]. 

 

And yet, Salle says Koons is perhaps unique among artists of his acquaintance for rarely speaking about his art in a technical manner; "he uses a civic - rather than an aesthetics or even a critical - language [...] it's all about what it does for the people who look at it" [79]. 

 

Koons wants his audience to feel good about themselves; giving them something they can not only identify with but be proud of. Usually, that would be enough to make me hate any artist, but, for some reason, I've always liked him. Perhaps it's because he also "makes the thingyness of modern life, that is, the way we bond and identify with products-as-images, coherent; he takes the iconic or mythic and makes it local" [82-83]. 

 

Some people might dismiss this as only a minor achievment, but for me, it's an act of magic or alchemy, which Salle labels the poetry of transference. 

 

Like Salle, I also spent time in Bilbao and, as a floraphile, I was equally delighted to see Koons's Puppy standing in front of the Guggenheim: "I was so grateful for its being there; it was such a gift. I never tired of seeing it; I was just happy it existed." [83]       

   

Jeff Koons: Puppy (1992) 

Stainless steel, soil, and flowering plants 

(1240 x 1240 x 820 cm)

guggenheim-bilbao.eus

 

 

Notes

[a] Written by jazz musicians Sy Oliver and Trummy Young back in the day, it was first recorded in 1939 with Ella Fitzgerald on vocals and backed by Chick Webb and his orchestra: click here.

      The Fun Boy Three version with Bananarama was released as a single in January 1982 on Chrysalis Records and reached number 4 in the UK charts. It also appeared on FB3's eponymous debut album released in March of '82. Given a ska/new wave interpretation, it's catchy - if a bit irritating after a while (as most catchy songs are): click here to play.    

 

[b] David Salle, How to See (W. W. Norton, 2018), p. 15. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the post.

[c] Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1887), Preface, 4. 

 

[d] D. H. Lawrence, 'Making Pictures', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 228. 

 

[e] I very much like this idea; later, when discussing the work of the German artist Sigmar Polke, Salle speaks of the "deep pleasure that comes with seeing the familiar [- such as a pair of socks -] as something irrationally strange" [38].

 

[f] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles ... p. 205.

 

[g] For a post on the importance of saying No, click here. For a post in gentle praise of the Neutral, click here. 

[h] See D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, ed. with an Introduction by Keith Sagar (Chaucer Press, 2003), pp. 155 and 81. Yawning was one of the pictures seized in the police raid at the Warren Gallery in July 1929.   

[i] See for example the post entitled 'In Defence of Jeff Koons's Easyfun-Ethereal' (16 Feb 2022): click here. Readers who want to read other posts about Koons, or which refer to his work, should go to labels and click on his name (alternatively, they can just click here). 

[j] That's not to deny the importance and influence of Warhol and Koons is, says Salle, the only artist of his generation to be unfazed by Warhol's legacy and to have "the steely determination [...] to take life on Andy's terms" [78]. 

 

To read part 2 of this post, click here. 

 

To read part 3 of this post, click here.

 

And for an earlier post in which I discuss the Introduction to David Salle's How to See (2016), click here. 

For Tinks

Tinkerbell staring at me through the kitchen window 

(Feb 2025)

 

'The dead by the road, or on it, testify to the presence of man.'  [1]

 

 

I. 

 

One of my least favourite compound nouns in the English language is roadkill - an ugly word coined in the United States during the 1940s for an ugly phenomenon; namely, the unending slaughter of animals by cars and other motor vehicles and the negation also of any distinction between animals that meet their end in this sickening (and I would say sacrilegious) manner [2].   

 

 

II.

 

Essentially a non-phenomenon before the advent of motorised transport speeding along modern tarmacked roads built in the UK at the beginning of the 20th century [3], roadkill is something that first attracted the concern of naturalists in the 1920s. 

 

Since then, countless numbers of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates have died beneath the wheels (or been smashed on the windscreens) of road vehicles. 

 

We might also mention the fact that our road networks have massively altered the natural environment, often isolating wildlife populations and thus further decreasing their numbers, but, even without considering this, mortality resulting from roadkill alone significantly contributes to the population decline of many threatened species. 

 

Unfortunately, I suspect that the majority of drivers - insulated and indifferent inside their vehicles - simply don't give a shit; indeed, there is even evidence from studies that some drivers intentionally run over small animals, such as mice, frogs, or hedgehogs [4].        

 

And who knows, maybe even cats ... 

 

 

III.

 

Back in January 2023, Members of the House of Commons debated a petition signed by over 100,000 UK citizens calling upon Parliament to amend legislation so as to make it a legal requirement for a driver to stop and report an accident involving a cat (as they are already required to do in the case of a dog or a farm animal) [5]. 

 

As one Labour Member reminded the House, although dogs are the most popular pet in the UK, one in four households are home to at least one cat. Mine is one such household: home to a very handsome white and ginger male cat called Phoevos. And home also to a lively young female cat called Tinkerbell (or Tinks, for short) ... 

 

 

IV.

 

Technically, Tinks lived a few doors down with one of the neighbours, even if she spent a great deal of her time here during the last six months, observing everything that was going on and endlessly seeking affection (or food). Indeed, I have never known a friendlier (or greedier) little cat. And despite being half his size, she was soon chasing Phoevos from his favourite spots in the garden, so she could claim them as her own. 

 

And then, suddenly, she was no longer meowing at the door or sitting on the kitchen windowsill watching me do the washing up or prepare some lunch. And one instinctively knew that something must have happened to her ...

 

Sure enough, after a few days we learned from the neighbour that she'd been hit by a car and suffered severe injuries to her head and face, including a broken jaw, the loss of an eye, and possible brain damage. Luckily, someone - not the driver of the car who hit her - had stopped and taken her to the vet where she underwent emergency surgery. 

 

The prognosis isn't good, but she's being given a month to recover. If, at the end of that time, however, she's still unable to eat and her injuries haven't fully healed, then she'll be put down.   

 

 

V. 

 

Sadly, of course, this is not an uncommon occurrence. 

 

However, because there is still no legal requirement to report trafic collisions involving cats, nobody knows for sure know how many moggies are killed by vehicles on UK roads each year, although it's (conservatively) estimated to be around 230,000, which equates to 630 cats killed each and every day. 

 

So, what is to be done? Well, either we must change feline behaviour, or we must change driver behaviour. 

 

I suppose both are possible.

 

But when I think of poor Tinkerbell, I just want to scrap cars, rip up roads, and reduce the human population by a significant figure. 

 

To paraphrase D. H. Lawrence: 

 

How easily we might eliminate a few million humans and never miss them. Yet what a gap in the world, the missing feline face of Tinks the tabby cat, and the ting-a-ling-a-ling sound of her little blue bell when she came running. [6] 

 

Notes

 

[1] Timothy Findley, Journeyman: Travels of a Writer (Pebble Publications, 2003), p. 16. Findley goes on to suggest that when human beings stop killing animals without the slightest misgiving, they will then stop murdering one another. I serously doubt that, however. 

      I also suspect that we will never stop killing animals. For as the American anthropologist Jane Desmond concluded in a 2013 essay examining public indifference to animal suffering and their acceptance of roadkill, "animal lives have little value for most of the populations in the United States", particularly wild creatures which, unlike household pets for example, are unowned and lacking in monetary or emotional value. 

      See 'Requiem for Roadkill: Death and Denial on America's Roads', in Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions, ed. Helen Kopnina, and Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet (Routledge, 2013), pp. 46-58. The line quoted from is on p. 55.

 

[2] I have written about this topic before on TTA: see the post dated 4 October 2019: click here.

 

[3] The first roads designed specifically for cars were built in Nottingham in 1902; the same year that Welsh inventor Edgar Hooley gave the world the gift of tarmac. The first UK motorway, the Preston Bypass, opened in 1958; followed by the first city-to-city motorway, the M1, in 1959. 

 

[4] See E. Paul Ashley, Amanda Kosloski, and Scott A. Petrie, 'Incidence of Intentional Vehicle–Reptile Collisions', in Human Dimensions of Wildlife, Vol. 12, Issue 3 (2007), pp. 137-143. 

       The authors of this Canadian study found evidence that 2.7% of motorists would intentionally run over a lizard or snake, with some even speeding up to ensure they did so. The thing that surprises me is not that more male drivers were guilty of this than female, but that the figure is so low. Cruelty is one of the oldest pleasures of mankind, as Nietzsche liked to remind his readers; although today it is more often something practiced by the players of video games than celebrated at large public events.

 

[5] See 'Road Traffic Collisions Involving Cats', in Hansard, HC, Vol. 725 (debated on Monday 9 January 2023): click here. 

      Sadly, Rishi Sunak's government decided not to make a simple amendment to the legislation already in place under section 170 of the Road Traffic Act (1988) that covers horses, cattle, asses, mules, sheep, pigs, goats and dogs. It did, however, push through legislation requiring all cats in England to be microchipped before reaching twenty weeks of age. This new law came into effect on 10 June 2024. 

 

[6] I'm paraphrasing and extending the closing lines to Lawrence's poem 'Mountain Lion' in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (Martin Secker, 1923), pp. 187-189. The poem can be read in the Project Gutenberg edition of this work (2019) by clicking here.